Wood Bros. Racing Going Full-Time In Sprint Cup In 2016

By @GucciardoJoey

Wood Brothers Racing driver Ryan Blaney races in the 2015
Bojangles' Southern 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at
Darlington Raceway.

Homestead, FL -- Wood Brothers Racing, one of the longest-existing teams in NASCAR history, and has 98-career Sprint Cup victories has announced that they will field a full-time car in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in 2016.

Ryan Blaney will drive the team's No. 21 Ford. Blane made 15 starts with the team this season as he heads into Sunday's Sprint Cup Series finale, the Ford EcoBoost 400.

"These are the guys that made it happen, Ford Motor Company," co-team owner Eddie Wood said. "It is just a lot of people that have been working on this for a long time and we are really proud of our association and heritage with Ford Motor Company. We have been racing Ford Motor Company products for 65 years and we are really looking forward to next year and getting started with that."

Wood Brothers Racing will continue to have a technical alliance with Team Penske.

"It is what you dream of as a kid," Blaney, 21, said. "I have been fortunate enough to get great opportunities and meet great people being with Team Penske in 2012 which led to the Wood Brothers this year and then beyond for next year.

"Obviously it is a little overwhelming right now … knowing what is going to come but I am excited for it. I don't get excited about a lot of things and maybe I don't show it but I am really excited about this program for next year and having the opportunity."

It will be the first time since 2008 that the team, founded by team owner Glen Wood in 1953, has attempted to run the entire NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule. That season, three drivers, Bill Elliott, Marcos Ambrose and Jon Wood, split the driving duties, although Johnny Sauter made one attempt, failing to qualify at Las Vegas. The team's last full-time Sprint Cup season with a single-driver for came in 2006 with veteran Ken Schrader.

"We were in Pocono … testing for the Pocono race on May 28, 2008," Wood said. "At about noon that day Mr. Ford called me looking for a phone number. I hadn't talked to him in a while and he said, 'I haven't heard from you in a while, why haven't you called?' I told him we had been running so poorly that I had really just been ashamed. He says, 'So, you are saying this 21 is broken?' and I said, ‘Yeah, it is broken right now.'


"So he said we were going to see about that, that we would fix that. From that day until now, it has been just like this. He put some things in motion that started to help like increased engineering and just more of everything. There were some Ford Motor Company people that … moved in with us and helped get us straightened out and three years later we win the Daytona 500 (with driver Trevor Bayne). You can never give up."

Wood Brothers. Racing's biggest victory this decade has to be their 2011 Daytona 500 victory with Trevor Bayne behind the wheel.